2023-08-14 13:00:00
Beneath his thin mustache was a carnivorous smile. Joe Jackson has always been a cold and authoritarian man. Born in a town in Arkansas, he spent part of his childhood near Chicago, before becoming a boxer and a worker. Installed with his second wife in a small house in Gary, Indiana, he has ten children. Ambitious, he creates with his brother a group of blues, The Falcons, which never breaks through. He then pushes his sons into music.
Daily rehearsals are intense for Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael Jackson, dubbed The Jackson Five. For years, Joe prepares them for competitions, makes them perform as soon as possible wherever possible… They even perform in strip clubs! According to the father, his children never repeat enough. Beaten, humiliated, they had to call him “Joseph”. And Joseph is always ready to take off his belt to hit them with all his might at the slightest mistake, under the helpless gaze of their mother.
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Michael Jackson feels alone. He is smaller than his brothers, and does not support bullying. He often cries, desperate, especially when his father makes fun of “his big nose” and forbids him to play in the park with the other children. Under these conditions, it is impossible to make friends. But he trusts in the harsh methods of “Joseph”. After all, they will end up paying…
In 1969, Joe landed a contract for the group with the prestigious Motown Records label. Their single “I Want You Back” is a hit. Tubes (“ABC”…) follow one another and the father makes the whole family work: the daughters Rebbie, La Toya and Janet join their brothers on the stages of the Las Vegas casinos. Surfing on the success of his offspring, Joe created his own label (Ivory Tower Records) and signed other artists, who opened the Jackson concerts. A “win-win situation”… With an iron fist, Joe manages everything: contract changes, tours, passages behind the camera… The family settles in a large property in California.
Michael Jackson adored but depressed
Michael, child star, becomes a teenage star, an idol for little girls. In the middle of puberty, does he have pimples? His father tells him that he is ugly. Her confidence in him plummets. At the height of fame, Michael is depressed. Yet, not to mention the incredible effect it had on black music (bringing it out of the ghetto in which it was locked up and imposing it on all the radio and television stations of a predominantly racist America), Michael Jackson is a successful embodiment of the American dream.
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In solo, produced by Quincy Jones, he brilliantly mixes hip-hop, pop, funk, rock rhythms to make a very personal rhythm, recognizable among all, sensual, precise. Able to move the bones of a skeleton, the “King of Pop” touched the world in an irreversible way. Nothing will be able to silence this incredible voice whose treble rises in a pleasurable cry as high as the peaks. He is adored all over the world.
After the success of his album Off the Wall (1979), Michael will be able to get away from this father who constantly scrutinizes and criticizes him. In 1984, he officially changed managers for the release of Thriller, which is still today the best-selling album in history (70 million copies). Little by little, his brothers and sisters in turn end up firing this ruthless father, and moving away from him. To find his lost childhood, Michael builds Neverland, a paradise for children, with the excesses that we know… READ ALSOMichael Jackson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the land of barley sugar
At the end of the 1980s, the image of the ideal family definitely cracked. The dictatorial behavior of Joe begins to be known. Some Jackson cut ties with him. Michael softly confirms the abuse he suffered during an Oprah Winfrey interview in 1993. He admits that he remains so terrified of his father that he vomits before seeing him. “But I love him, I forgive him,” he corrects himself immediately. He knows that he is watching him… He excuses this behavior by the deprivations that Joe suffered during the Great Depression, the racism endured during segregation…
Joe Jackon claims his share of the inheritance
Each year, MJ continues to honor his father on his birthday: it is “Joseph Jackson Day”. Joe doesn’t see what he did wrong. After all, her children are role models. He will respond to the host, years later: “I punished him so that he didn’t turn out badly, and my children never ended up in prison, I don’t regret anything. »
READ ALSOPedophilia: “Leaving Neverland”, the documentary that overwhelms Michael JacksonWhen Michael Jackson died of an overdose in 2009, at age 50, neither his father nor his siblings were listed in his will. He nevertheless became one of the richest men in the world, buying the rights to 250 songs by the Beatles, Elvis, Bob Dylan… Michael bequeathed everything to his mother, his children and to charities. Joe, separated from his wife for decades, tries to get his hands on the hoard and the education of his grandchildren, placed according to Michael’s wishes under the guardianship of their grandmother. He attacks the executors to receive a pension of 15,000 dollars per month.
Because despite the success of his offspring, the patriarch is ruined. In debt of 24 million dollars, he had to declare bankruptcy. However, he took advantage of his son’s image to the end, launching – without his authorization – perfumes bearing his image, or by publishing a book of family photos… He died of cancer in 2018, at the age of 89. , owning only his apartment in Las Vegas.
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